Burdens Of Judgment Research Articles

Defining Death Behind the Veil of Ignorance

In this article I examine the question of how a liberal state should go about defining death. Plausible standards for a definition of death include a somatic one based on circulatory criteria, death by neurologic criteria (DNC), and higher brain death. I will argue that Rawlsian "burdens of judgment" apply in this process: that is, reasonable disagreement should be expected on important topics, and such disagreement ought not be resolved via the coercive powers of the state. Nevertheless, the state must legislate a definition of death, and in doing so faces a "neutralist dilemma," that is, when there are multiple reasonable ways to move forward, only one can be chosen. I will examine a possible way to exit this neutralist dilemma. Finally, I will argue for DNC as the normatively preferred default definition of death. To do this, I will employ the Rawlsian heuristic of the "original position" and offer public reasons in favor of using DNC as the preferred default definition of death.

Fragmented Pragmatism: On Sungmoon Kim’s Pragmatic Confucian Democracy

Fragmented Pragmatism: On Sungmoon Kim’s Pragmatic Confucian Democracy

The limits of conjecture: Political liberalism, counter-radicalisation and unreasonable religious views

Originally proposed by John Rawls, the idea of reasoning from conjecture is popular among the proponents of political liberalism in normative political theory. Reasoning from conjecture consists in discussing with fellow citizens who are attracted to illiberal and antidemocratic ideas by focusing on their religious or otherwise comprehensive doctrines, attempting to convince them that such doctrines actually call for loyalty to liberal democracy. Our goal is to criticise reasoning from conjecture as a tool aimed at persuasion and, in turn, at improving the stability of liberal democratic institutions. To pursue this goal, we use as case study real-world efforts to counter-radicalise at-risk Muslim citizens, which, at first glance, reasoning from conjecture seems well-placed to contribute to. This case study helps us to argue that the supporters of reasoning from conjecture over-intellectualise opposition to liberal democracy and what societies can do to counter it. Specifically, they (i) underestimate how few members of society can effectively perform reasoning from conjecture; (ii) overlook that the burdens of judgement, a key notion for political liberals, highlight how dim the prospects of reasoning from conjecture are and (iii) do not pay attention to the causes of religious persons’ opposition to liberal democracy. However, not everything is lost for political liberals, provided that they redirect attention to different and under-researched resources contained in Rawls’s theory. In closing, we briefly explain how such resources are much better placed than reasoning from conjecture to provide guidance relative to counter-radicalisation in societies (i) populated by persons who do not generally hold anything close to a fully worked out and internally consistent comprehensive doctrine and (ii) where political institutions should take responsibility for at least part of the existing alienation from liberal democratic values.

Sideways at the entrance of the cave: A pluralist footnote to Plato

The idea of a ‘true’ account of pluralism is ultimately contradictory. Liberal political philosophers often fell prey to a special version of this fallacy by presupposing that there might be only one correct argument for justifying the acceptance of pluralism as the core of a liberal democratic polity. Avoiding this trap, Rawls’s ‘political liberalism’ has offered a more sophisticated view of reasonable pluralism as linked with the ‘burdens of judgement’. His philosophical agenda, however, left some questions underexplored: What is the relation of pluralism to relativism? How can a conception of pluralism (epistemic, moral and political) avoid being either one view among others with no special claim to truth, or a foundationalist claim? If pluralism is a fact, in what sense can it bind us? These questions – crucial for grasping the distinctiveness of ‘political’ liberalism – are addressed by revisiting Plato’s simile of the cave, in order to make it accommodate the groundbreaking Rawlsian notion of the ‘reasonable’.

The Issue of ‘Radical Otherness’ in Contemporary Theories of Democracy and Citizenship Education

This article examines the concept of ‘radical otherness’ from the perspectives of John Rawls’ political liberalism and Chantal Mouffe's agonistic pluralism, and studies the relevance of these approaches to contemporary citizenship education. In this context, the notion of ‘radical otherness’ refers to such ethical, political or religious doctrines that are incompatible with the basic principles of liberal democracy and thus present a potential challenge to democratic institutions. The article suggests that despite its recent popularity in political philosophy and theory of education, Mouffe's agonistic pluralism faces difficulties in providing an adequate response to the issue of accommodating radical others in contemporary democratic societies. As a rejoinder to the Mouffean approach to political education, the paper develops a view of citizenship education based on Rawls’ concept of reasonableness, and the democratic principles associated with it. It is argued in the paper that these principles—reciprocity and the burdens of judgment—are constituent elements of the symbolic space required by democratic politics. The article further suggests, however, that to properly address the issue of radical otherness in contemporary democracies, the limitations of the Rawlsian approach must also be recognised. Accordingly, Rawls’ theory needs to be complemented with a more critical understanding of the economic, social and political processes and mechanisms that currently create structural injustice and social and political inequality in contemporary democracies.

Pragmatism, Pluralism, and the Burdens of Judgment

Pragmatism, Pluralism, and the Burdens of Judgment

Å smi et tillitsforhold - helsepersonells erfaringer om samtalens vilkår i møte med pasienter og pårørende

This paper emphases and discusses counseling to interpret how the practitioners use judgment and reflection in dialogues with patients and their relatives. The purpose of the study was to gain more insight into the opportunity for the practitioners to encounter patients and their families within the hospital, and how the practitioners judgment are expressed when they counseling the patients and their next of kin. Data was collected using twenty papers from students undergoing the study program at master level “Honours in Health Pedagogy”, 30 ECTS, in Northern Norway. Qualitative content analysis where reducing, grouping and abstracting the text is used to achieve main themes. The practitioners’ experiences from practicing counseling and dialogue with patients and their relatives represent three following perspectives. It’s a challenge to find a room with possibility for confidentiality. The practitioners also experience not having time enough for counseling, based on dialogues. The practitioners say the encounter and counseling is often behind the screen or in the corridor. According to the practitioners you need to forge a relation based on trust. The practitioners value the skills of judgment, but at the same time they experience the burden of judgment.

Political Philosophy and Epistemology: The Case of Public Reason

Public Reason theorists in political philosophy – roughly, Rawlsians – often make what sure sound like epistemological statements. They talk about justifying principles to others, about the uncertainty with which we should hold our evaluative commitments, about reasonable persons and comprehensive doctrines, about a morally politically motivated higher epistemic standard, about intellectual modesty, and of course, about the burdens of judgment. But they rarely explain, let alone defend, these seemingly epistemological commitments, nor do they engage contemporary epistemological literature. In this paper, I expose these commitments to epistemological scrutiny, arguing that at the end of the day they cannot be vindicated. I focus on what, on such theories, a reasonable person who is nevertheless committed to a comprehensive doctrine believes, and on what epistemic standard may be politically relevant in this context.

Rhetoric and Events

Abstract Rhetoric is an art that finds its habitation in events. Rhetoric emerges within growing points of opposition and struggle, using language to constitute facts that stand out from situations in order to give to an audience the burden of judgment. This article seeks to provide a framework for articulating the relationship between rhetoric and events through the writings of John Dewey and his collaborator Arthur Bentley, who found in the term “event” a way of advancing their transactional perspective on human action that they believed could function as a corrective to pervasive social pathologies. Using their vocabulary, it advances a definition of rhetoric as an art that reacts to events by constituting meaningful situations in which judgments of character are possible. But it also claims that the ethics of transaction requires a more subtle and long-term effort to show how our own characters as “individuals” are themselves formed in transaction with rhetoric and events.

Is there a need for political liberalism to have an account of pre-overlapping consensus reasoning?

In his Liberalism without Perfection, Jonathan Quong argues for internal conception of political liberalism which goal is to show that a liberal well-ordered society is internally coherent ideal and that citizens who would be raised in such society could endorse and support their own liberal institutions and principles if those institutions and principles are justified in particular way These institutions should be justified by particular conception of public reason which main feature is that overlapping consensus is the first stage of its justificatory structure. So, public reasoning of citizens in well-ordered society should be based solely on values and ideas inherent to liberal conception of justice - freedom, equality, fair system of cooperation and burdens of judgment. Another important feature of Quong?s conception of public reason concerns its scope. Quong argues for a wide scope of public reason which demands that all coercive or binding laws or public policies should be justified (whenever possible) on basis of these values alone. Thus, reasonable citizens in well-ordered society by definition accord deliberative priority to public reasons over their other comprehensive or nonpublic beliefs whenever they exercise their collective political power over one another. The problem I raise in this paper is that it is very likely that in well-ordered society there will be a group of citizens that will not accord full deliberative priority to political values, especially not at all levels of political deliberation. On certain issues they will like to see their particular values being realized through common political institutions. If our political theory excludes this group from justificatory constituency on this particular issue or categorize them as unreasonable it can easily undermine their general adherence to liberal conception of justice and endanger stability of well-ordered society. Thus, my point is that we need a further development of political liberalism to solve such problems not as a part of non-ideal theory but as a part of its ideal of well-ordered society.

The Juror, the Citizen, and the Human Being: The Presumption of Innocence and the Burden of Judgment

In this essay, I suggest that the criminal trial is not only about the guilt or innocence of the defendant, but also about the character and growth of the jurors and the communities they represent. In earlier work, I have considered the potential impact of law and politics on the character of citizens, and thus on the capacity of citizens to thrive – to live full and rich human lives. Regarding the jury, I have argued that aspects of criminal trial procedure work to fix in jurors a sense of agency in and responsibility for verdicts of conviction. Here, I draw on those ideas with respect to the presumption of innocence. I suggest that the presumption of innocence works not primarily as legal rule, but rather as a moral framing device – a sort of moral discomfort device – encouraging jurors to feel and bear the weight of what they do. I offer an account of character development in which virtues are conceived of not merely as modes of conduct developed through habituation and practice, but also as capacities and ways of being developed in part through understanding and experience. The criminal trial, framed by the presumption of innocence, can be an experience through which jurors and their communities, by learning what it means and feels like to carry a certain sort of moral weight, may engender a certain set of moral strengths – strengths valuable to them not just as jurors, but also as citizens, and as human beings.

Too Soon to Say

Abstract(1) Rupert Read charges that Rawls culpably overlooksthe politicized Euthyphro:Do we accept our political perspective because it is right or is it right because we accept it? (2) This charge brings up the question of thedeficiency dilemma:Do others disagree with us because of our failures or theirs? – where the two dilemmas appear to be independent of each other and lead to the questions ofthe logic of deficiency, moral epistemic deficiency, epistemic peers, and thehardnessof philosophy. (3) In reply, on an expanded principle of charity Rawls does not overlook theEuthyphrobut rather offers ground-breaking solutions to it, (4) that nonetheless trip on theindependent bootstrap(5) – as also do Dreben and Nussbaum. (6) Furthermore, Rawls's ‘burdens of judgment’ seek to bypass the necessity of moral epistemic deficiency and (7) suggest a wider framework for understanding disagreement that sees disagreement as arising from inquiry being in development, unpredictable and uncertain. (8) This wider frameworkentailsthat disagreement does not mean moral epistemic deficiency and (9) that our responses to theEuthyphroare ‘too soon to say’.

The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus Revisited

John Rawls claims that a society must be stable in order to be just, and in his later work he argues that this requirement of stability can be satisfied in a liberal constitutional democracy only if it includes an overlapping consensus. In an overlapping consensus, all reasonable citizens endorse a common conception of justice, but they do so from within divergent conceptions of what is good. Rawls articulates the idea of overlapping consensus in recognition of the burdens of judgment, which are factors that make it difficult for us to exercise judgment about certain subject matters, including especially controversial questions of morality and metaphysics, such as what is good for human beings and the nature of personhood. We have different experiences. We have been exposed to different evidence. The evidence we have sometimes conflicts and significantly underdetermines theories that might explain it. In view of these difficulties in forming views about morality and metaphysics, Rawls maintains, we should not in general expect consensus in these domains. We should expect instead the fact of reasonable disagreement, where persons engage in open and sincere deliberation yet reach different conclusions. In light of the inevitable reasonable disagreement, Rawls contends that we should strive in the public realm to achieve consensus only about distributive justice, not more generally about what is right and what is good. It is commonly believed that the need for overlapping consensus is produced simply by the conjunction of the fact of reasonable disagreement with the requirement of stability. The stability requirement Rawls advances consists in part

Toleration as sedition

This paper examines and criticizes the defence of toleration due to John Rawls in Political Liberalism, and similar strategies mobilized in defence of toleration. It argues that the notion of the burdens of judgement, used by Rawls to defend his doctrine of reasonable pluralism, faces incoherence: schematically, either disagreement succumbs to reason, or vice versa. On similar grounds, reasonable disagreement defences of neutrality fail because of a double-mindedness about the relation between private judgements and public reason. This problem arises, it is argued, from an attempt to make private judgements determinative in the formation of political and legal outcomes, even while subjecting the latter’s justification to norms of public reason. Deference to private judgements in political justification tends to countenance sedition, and this applies also to modern liberal attempts such as Rawls’s to ground toleration in private judgements.

Reply

Sir: We are delighted that our article stimulated Dr. Singh's thoughtful response and positive comments. The idea of the article originated in a question first posed by Dr. Goldwyn when he wondered how common the practice was of plastic surgeons performing aesthetic surgery on family members. When my daughter, Sara, was considering topics for a senior year project in psychology, her undergraduate major, she reviewed the literature on this topic but could not identify publications in plastic surgery. Thanks to her diligence, and the cooperation of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, an investigative survey was conducted and this article emerged. We did not address specifically the issue of should (a moral judgment) plastic surgeons perform such procedures. Rather, we sought to identify the reasons—best plastic surgeon, financial incentives, surgeon's experience, and patient request—for these operations and their results. However, many important ethical issues can be raised in the context of this article relating to informed consent, management of complications, and burdens of judgment, and even guilt felt by the surgeon or patient. Thus, Dr. Singh's first point about whether we should be making patients out of lovers (or loved ones) is on the mark. That we hold our surgical skills and ourselves in such high esteem (above average, as one might say) is a reflection, I believe and hope, more of our arduous training than surgeon ego. Confidence in one's skills is a necessity; overconfidence and arrogance can be an undoing. We are gratified that our article has struck so many chords. Sumner A. Slavin, M.D. Sara A. Slavin, B.A. Brookline, Mass.

Reasonableness, Pluralism, and Liberal Moral Doctrines

If there is, as it seems, deep and pervasive disagreement about what is right and good for us, as well as the nature of moral judgment, we may ask how political discussion can have any moral justification and how fellow citizens are to justify themselves and their proposals to each other in an era of pluralism. According to John Rawls, in a situation of moral pluralism, citizens should be reasonable. They should view each other as free and equal moral persons, and they should offer each other fair terms of social cooperation. Moreover, they should recognize and accept the consequences of the burdens of judgment, that differences between reasonable comprehensive doctrines have a morally innocent source, and therefore, that they should not try to attain a rational agreement on a single comprehensive doctrine. It follows that in justifying a political conception, the reasons given to others are ‘‘reasons we might reasonably expect that they, as free and equal citizens, might also accept.’’ For that reason, in his later work, political liberalism, Rawls seeks to ‘‘apply the principle of toleration to philosophy itself’’ and to bracket controversial

Stem Cells, Cloning, and Political Liberalism

AbstractThis paper examines the political and policy making challenges posed by human embryonic stem cell research and somatic cell nuclear transfer, known colloquially as cloning, by applying two facets of John Rawls' construct of political liberalism—the burdens of judgment and overlapping consensus—to consider how such seemingly intractable controversies are resolved in a constitutional democracy. The analysis underscores the importance of both civic and scientific education to promoting the capacity of citizens to achieve what Rawls calls an overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensive doctrines.

The Burden of Judgment

The Burden of Judgment

The Burdens of Judgment and Fallibilism

Rawls's burdens of judgment are a list of factors that explain why reasonable persons in a diverse society are likely to hold different, often incompatible, conceptions of the good. According to Charles Larmore, the burdens of judgment satisfy political liberalism's ambition of supporting liberal political principles through a minimalist moral conception. By using the burdens, we ground liberal politics in the modest notion of reasonable disagreement, avoiding reliance on controversial comprehensive notions such as autonomy, individuality, skepticism about the good, or value pluralism. In this paper I argue that the burdens of judgment cannot provide adequate support for liberal political principles unless they are read in a way that comports with Kymlicka's modest version of autonomy liberalism. As it renounces fallibilism, political liberalism's moral minimalism can be manipulated in a way that reconciles it with decidedly illiberal results. The only way to avoid this problem is to recognize that the justification of liberal principles cannot be detached from notions of fallibilism and critical reflection about the good. Ultimately, political liberalism's emphasis on moral minimalism deprives it of the conceptual resources it needs to deal with contemporary controversies concerning the defence and clarification of liberal policies.

A Rawlsian Argument Against the Duty of Civility

In this article, I show that the assumptions underpinning John Rawls's so‐called “duty of civility” ought to lead one not to affirm the duty but to reject it. I will begin by setting out in its essentials the content and rationale of the “duty of civility,” which lies at the heart of Rawls's ideal of public reason. Secondly, I will argue that the very premises allegedly underpinning the duty of civility—namely, the values of reciprocity and political autonomy, and the burdens of judgment—in fact rule it out. Thirdly, I will suggest that if my argument against the duty of civility is correct, then one recent attempt to salvage political liberalism and reasonableness from the charge of incoherence fails. Finally, I draw some challenging lessons from our discussion for political liberalism and the liberal tradition as a whole.